The Story
The first freeze has reached a wooded ridge in the East Tennessee foothills of the Smoky Mountains, and a white-tailed buck stands close enough to a hidden trail camera that his head and antlers fill the frame.
It is the week of October 30, 2023. Leaves are past peak and falling fast, the pond has dried down to little more than weeds, and the bucks are coming out of the back ridges. Some big ones are about, especially at night. The little ones act as though they are big ones.
Up close, the field marks read like a checklist. A white band runs behind the nose, a white ring circles the eye, and the inside of the ear is white. The coat has turned grayish-brown, the winter version. Deer molt into it in September: dense woolly underfur beneath long hollow guard hairs. His antlers spread and branch, as an adult male's do; a younger male may carry a single point.
Those antlers grew in velvet from spring and hardened by fall. In Connecticut the breeding season runs from late October through early January, peaking in the last two weeks of November, and Missouri's peaks in mid-November. Bucks rub trees and paw scrapes as it builds, and rivals settle access to a doe by clashing antlers rather than guarding harems. On this ridge the younger bucks are already trailing the does, and two big ones look set to decide who is dominant.
Food is the other story of the week. Acorns are scarcer than last year, though walnuts came in. In fall deer turn to acorns and other nuts and lay down fat, under the skin and even in the hollow leg bones, which by late fall can make up 10 to 25 percent of body weight.
Down at the pond, does and their fawns keep a lookout for coyotes. When a coyote passes the deer clear out, then drift back once he is gone.
